


when a good man goes to war

by rangerhitomi



Series: radical dreamers [18]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 18:12:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6968446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Durbe returns from a war in his homeland a changed man. Nasch doesn't know how to help him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when a good man goes to war

It is not yet sundown, Nasch thinks, but the storm churns the sea so violently it floods the lower fields of the island, and the sky is so dark that no sunlight would ever be able to escape it. His heart pounds anxiously – Durbe should be returning this evening, so the knight had promised, and Nasch is horrified at the thought of his best friend trying to navigate this storm. The wind is picking up speed with each passing minute. Nasch can no longer stand out on the balcony to wait on the knight for fear of being blown over.

Merag convinces him to come inside, out of the rain, and have some hot soup. It burns all the way down his throat and Nasch cannot even enjoy the spicy flavor. His stomach twists, and he’s sure he’s about to throw up.

“He’ll be safe,” she tries to reassure him, though her troubled face doesn’t reflect her sentiments. Her eyes are a little clouded, narrowed in contemplation. She senses Durbe’s life force, but where he is and what he’s doing are always hard for her to determine.

“How can he survive a storm this bad?” Nasch demands, and he slams his spoon down. “Don’t tell me he’s safe if he isn’t.”

“He’s…” Merag falters and Nasch’s chest tightens. “He’s alive.”

Nasch shoves his bowl away, spilling half of it on the table, and gets up to leave. He knows, and Merag knows, that  _alive_ and  _safe_  aren’t the same thing.

* * *

 

There’s a small pool of water at his feet when he reaches his bedchambers, coming out of the room. Nasch has a moment of irritation overshadow his fear and anxiety for a split second; if a servant had left his balcony doors open and flooded his room, he was going to be furious.

He should leave and find a different room for the night, but he wants to see the damage – maybe he simply wants to wait for Durbe on his own balcony, and damn the rain.  

He pushes the door open.

Hunched over on a stool in the middle of the room is Durbe, his armor gone and his light underclothes soaked through so deeply and stuck so tightly to his skin that Nasch can see every muscle on his body. His head is down, silver hair plastered to his forehead and cheeks. Behind him, the rain pours into the room through the open doors to the balcony, but Durbe does not seem bothered by it in the least.

Something is terribly wrong with him.

Nasch splashes through the chilly, inch-deep water on his floor and kneels next to the stool where Durbe sits. Durbe’s eyes are blank; he doesn’t respond to Nasch whispering his name or shaking him gently by the shoulders. He’s breathing; Nasch can feel it when he leans close, but his eyes are unblinking, his skin like ice.

Only when Nasch takes Durbe’s hand does the knight react. He looks at Nasch, straight in the eyes, and whispers “forgive me,” before his eyes close and he falls forward.

* * *

 

Nasch is shivering, but only partly because of the cold now. He gives in to Merag’s demands that he change clothes and warm himself with a blanket, but he won’t leave Durbe’s side. Merag looks at the unconscious knight as though he is cursed and leans closer to her brother.

“Something’s wrong with him,” she whispers, biting her lip. “It feels like him, but it… doesn’t, at the same time. He feels different.”

Nasch holds his blanket closer. “He’s probably just sick,” he tries to convince himself, and Merag’s lips tighten but she doesn’t object.

“I’m going to go pray in my quarters,” she murmurs, and kisses her brother on each cheek before leaving.

He wipes the tears from his face, kneels next to Durbe’s bed, and prays. He’s never been good at it, not like his sister, but if anyone needed the gods’ blessings right then…

Within twenty minutes, he’s fast asleep.

* * *

 

Someone is touching him, and he wakes suddenly.

It’s Durbe, who’s lying on his side as he tangles his fingers through Nasch’s hair. Nasch sits up, letting Durbe’s hand fall to the bed, heart hammering, and he winces at the pain in his cramped legs. Durbe smiles, but it might have come from a stranger. It doesn’t reach his eyes, which are slate-gray and hold none of their usual warmth.

Durbe had never touched Nasch like that before, either.

“What’s the matter?” Durbe murmurs, but it’s all wrong; the way he speaks is the way he had heard his mother and father speak to each other when they thought he couldn’t hear. It is not the way a friend should speak to another. Nasch tries to move back, but Durbe’s hand catches him by the forearm. “Nasch?”

“You’re not yourself,” Nasch manages to say. “I-I should leave you to—“

Durbe sits up; the sheets fall from his body. He isn’t wearing a shirt – or anything else, Nasch realizes with a kind of petrified terror, pulling his eyes from Durbe’s sharp hipbones, and instead Nasch’s gaze lands on a horrible scar on his stomach.

He can’t speak, or move, and Durbe’s hand is still clamped around Nasch’s arm.

“You don’t want to stay?” Durbe whispers, and Nasch blurts out a  _no_ before he can think about it.

There’s a moment where he feels  _scared_. If Durbe hadn’t let go a few seconds later, Nasch isn’t sure he would have been able to say no a second time, and that terrifies him even more.

* * *

 

Nasch stands rigidly on his balcony a few days later, watching Durbe training in the courtyard below. Nasch had trained with him dozens of times before, and these steps look nothing like Durbe’s. They’re forceful, almost violent offensive moves, though Durbe is a defensive fighter. Merag joins him and rubs his shoulders.

“He kissed my hand today,” Nasch says quietly, and Merag gives his shoulders a little squeeze. “He hasn’t done that since the first time we met.”

“He must have missed you a great deal, Brother,” Merag murmurs. “Something terrible happened to him. I feel that much, at least.”

Nasch doesn't tell her that Durbe had wanted to take him in his bed the other night. He would have to admit to himself that part of him had wanted to. “When you said you felt him but not really  _him_ , what did you mean by that?”

Merag doesn’t answer right away. Her thumbs roll in circles on his neck. “I don’t know how to explain it, Brother. Sometimes… when you lose something, you lose part of yourself.”

“So you think something terrible happened in his home kingdom.”

“I don’t know, Brother. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

She gives him another tight squeeze and leaves his side.

* * *

 

Nasch finds Durbe bathing, which is the last thing he wants to find Durbe doing, but he needs to show Durbe that he isn't afraid of him. He  _can't_ be afraid of him; Durbe is his best friend, and there isn’t even a need  _to_ be afraid. But he turns away regardless.

Neither speaks; Durbe is focused on his bath and scraping the salty sweat from his arms and chest as Nasch wordlessly hands over hair potions and soaps without turning around. Finally, the silence is too much.

“What happened to you, Durbe?”

He doesn’t see Durbe’s expression, but can imagine it – confused and hurt. “I... I'm sorry?"

"You were acting very unlike yourself earlier, Durbe." Nasch holds up a towel. 

Durbe doesn't take it from him. "Much has happened since I left for my homeland, my friend." 

Nasch forces himself to turn around this time. Durbe is standing next to the bath, naked as the day he was born, with one hand placed over the wound on his side, standing out against his pale skin. His expression is grim. 

Nasch lets Durbe reach out his free hand to hold his own. 

"I've been through a great deal of pain and loss," Durbe murmurs. The lifelessness in his eyes is gone, replaced by a deep, penetrating sadness. Nasch can feel it now, can see it in every line on Durbe's face, can see it in the tears clinging to his eyelashes. "I have nothing left in my homeland and I fear I have nothing left here."

Sorrow sweeps over Nasch, and now he understands why Durbe acted the way he did—he was clinging to the one constant he still had. Durbe's friendship meant the world to Nasch. He had never considered what that same friendship meant to Durbe until this moment. "I'm not going anywhere, Durbe," he whispers. "You  _always_  have a home here."

Durbe shakes his head, smiling humorlessly. "You don't understand, Nasch." His hand tightens over his injury, and Nasch squeezes his other hand, forcing himself to keep staring into Durbe's young, pained face and not at his torso. But Durbe turns his face away and takes the towel at long last, wrapping it around his waist. 

He walks away; Nasch knows Durbe is right. He doesn't understand.

* * *

 

He finds Durbe wandering the halls late one night, muttering to himself. At first, Nasch is about to call out to him, to ask what is the matter, but he freezes as Durbe suddenly seizes a decorative porcelain vase sitting on a small table and flings it at the wall. The vase shatters with a crash that must wake the whole palace, and Nasch can’t move his feet—he can barely breathe—when Durbe falls to his knees, hunched over and sobbing.

Nasch is useless in that moment, and more than a little frightened of Durbe.

Merag sweeps past in her nightclothes, bare feet making no sound on the rug, and kneels next to the knight. Nasch wants to tell her to stay away from him, but he can’t speak, and sure to his fears, Durbe’s hand finds Merag’s neck as soon as she touches his shoulder.

Neither moves; not Merag, with her mouth open in disbelief, not Durbe, with his face contorted in confusion and anger.

“Durbe,” Nasch chokes out, as weakly as if it was his throat being squeezed and not his sister’s, “please…”

The knight’s shaking hand loosens its grip, slowly, and his slow breathing gives way to hyperventilation. Merag doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, but gazes at Durbe in horror.

He scrambles to his feet and half-runs, half-stumbles, toward the palace gates.

* * *

 

He’s trying to attach the saddle to Mahha’s back, trying to attach the reins, but his hands are shaking too much to get very far. Mahha whinnies softly, tosses his head, and Durbe curses under his breath.

Nasch watches him in silence. Durbe doesn’t seem to notice he’s there, but Nasch doesn’t want to startle him.

He thinks he understands now. Not _what_ Durbe feels, but _why_.

Durbe turns to lead Mahha from the stable, the harness half-attached, and when he realizes he’s not alone his hand reaches for his sword.

Nasch lets him.

His back is against the stable wall, Durbe’s sword at his neck, and his ragged breathing matches Durbe’s. Behind Durbe, Mahha whinnies louder now, a sound Durbe ignores as his grey gaze sweeps over Nasch’s face. The pressure against Nasch’s neck loosens.

“You’re safe here,” Nasch whispers.

“I can’t get out,” Durbe whispers back. “I can’t.”

“You’re safe here,” Nasch repeats, forcing down the panic welling inside him. Durbe’s sword is still too close to his neck, so he doesn’t touch him. “Look around you. What do you see?”

Durbe’s eyes flicker from Nasch’s face to the stable doors, then back again; he repeats this process as he takes in the stables. The confusion in his eyes deepens, then lifts, as he takes in the face of the man he has pressed against a wall.

“Nasch…”

“That’s right.”

Durbe lets out an anguished sob; the sword falls to the dirty ground with a clang. With cold, trembling hands, he touches Nasch’s face, running his palms and fingers over every contour, every line, as roughly as if he were a sculptor creating a face out of clay. Nasch closes his eyes and lets Durbe’s hands slide down the curves of his neck, his shoulders, his chest. Durbe’s breath is hot on his cheek and Nasch’s own breathing quickens—his heart is shuddering irregularly—and Durbe presses his face into Nasch’s hair, inhaling deeply.

“Nasch,” he breathes, and suddenly Nasch’s face is in his hands once more, Durbe’s half-open mouth inches from Nasch’s own.

He freezes, and Nasch stops breathing.

After an eternity, Durbe’s hands fall from Nasch’s face. He pulls his head back, face wet, and Nasch remembers to exhale.

“Did I hurt you?”

“You’re the one who’s hurt, Durbe.”

“You’re terrified of me.”

“I want to help you without hurting you more.”

Durbe’s breathing is normalizing now. Nasch wishes his own would follow suit.

“I don’t know who to trust anymore,” Durbe says in a quiet voice. “I thought I could… but in the end…” He places a hand to the wound on his side.

Without thinking, Nasch reaches for Durbe’s hand, but catches himself at the last second. His hand hovers millimeters from Durbe’s.

“Go ahead,” Durbe whispers, and Nasch touches him. Durbe guides his hand under his shirt, over the scarring, a hot, angry red line that extends from Durbe’s waistband to the curve in his hip. “They came up behind me, tried to…” His fingernails dig into Nasch’s wrist, just for a moment. “I thought they were my friends.”

Curiosity—sick, morbid curiosity—tugs at Nasch’s emotions, but he forces them down. “We don’t have to talk about this if it still hurts.”

“Talk...” Durbe closes his eyes. He’s quiet for a long time, but Nasch gives him silence. He doesn’t move his hand from the curve of Durbe’s waist. Mahha stands silently behind Durbe, eyes fixed on Nasch, and Nasch could swear that the pegasus was asking Nasch to take care of his master. When Durbe finally opens his eyes, they’re filled with tears. “Do you love me, Nasch?”

There are different kinds of love, Nasch knows, and he doesn’t know which one Durbe means. But he’s able to answer honestly. “Yes,” he whispers, nodding. “Yes.”

He takes Durbe into his arms, lets Durbe wrap himself around his body, lets Durbe touch him all over. Once, Durbe leans close to Nasch’s face as though to kiss him—Nasch’s breath hitches in his throat—but whispers _no, no_ to himself and turns his head away. Nasch understands why; Durbe is vulnerable, is probably scared to bare even this much of himself to another. He’d been betrayed, almost killed. He probably had to take lives of people he thought were friends. It would take years, perhaps, for Durbe to be able to control his anger and paranoia; it would take years, perhaps, before Durbe would no longer find himself _there,_ before he would be able to open up his heart to Nasch.

Nasch doesn’t understand _what_ Durbe feels, but he thinks he understands _why_.


End file.
